This seminar will draw from current technical research at the National Gallery of Art which explores artistic exchange among genre painters who worked between 1650 and 1675. These painters depicted elegant scenes of privileged life and courtship for an elite Dutch art market. Material evidence suggests shared working methods among artists who did not all live in the same city—their painting practices were extraordinarily refined
and they frequently employed the most costly art materials available. Each cultivated a recognizable manner and subtle variations of handling and materials offers evidence that they sold at somewhat different price levels. These painters also show remarkable responses to each others’ work: they quoted whole compositions but they also referenced “style signifiers”: select aspects of their fellows’ and rivals’ manner. Through such observations, technical study offers primary evidence for seventeenth century artists’ evaluations of artistic style. This research, carried out with Lisha Glinsman, will appear in the catalogue of the 2017 exhibition Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry in Paris, Dublin and Washington.